Wednesday ...and counting the hours...

Lemon Meringue...

   Company coming on Friday. House: still not cleaned. Laundry: not done yet.  Green beans: picked another full peck today, and must can today or tomorrow. Teapots: finally back up on cabinet top shelves.  Sigh....my list seems to grow longer instead of shorter.  The good news is this: I know how my relatives live, so nothing here...and I mean NOTHING...will offend or shock or disgust THEM in any manner.  This is all about me.  The bad news is this: now I don't have so much motivation to kill myself doing all this.  lol  I was thinking that I might call my son and see if he has the time to come do a couple of things for me that I can pay him for. Not big jobs, but things that would take some of the pressure off me. He's not working much, off and on like crazy, then downtimes that make him nuts. He'd probably come do it just to keep busy.

   I was hoping to have 4 days off, but it's not to be. Looks like I have to work my regular 2 days off and take only Saturday and Sunday so that I can be with the family. How I long for the days when my time was my own and I could do everything anytime I wanted to.  When I wasn't at the mercy of other people and their opinions and their demands...oh well.

  I went out to feed chickens and take Roxie to the backyard when I noticed that I had green beans out the Ya-Ya again. It's a blessing, don't get me wrong. But it takes almost an hour to pick that bed. And it kills my back. And then I noticed that it is dry as a bone out there, so apparently the Irishman is coming home from work, eating the delicious meals I have cooked for him, plopping on the couch,  turning  on the tv and not moving a muscle.  I know he's not been sleeping well. But neither have I.

  Marriage.  It's something else, isn't it?  I saw a little thing at a craft show once that said ...

    "Marriages are made in Heaven,

     But then, so are thunder and lightning."

   I have been married and not married. In a good marriage and a not so good marriage.  In love and out of love.  And mostly, listening to my friends (married and not) we are usually yearning over the fence at the marriage we don't have, or at the single life we wish we did have.  Greener grass and all that, I guess. I am the married sort. I guess. lol  I have spent the better part of this relationship of  two decades either trying to accept him the way he is or trying to change him for his own good.  LOL  It's a conundrum.  Some of the things that I found SO charming about him back then drive me nuts in the right now. He has changed and grown and mellowed...a little too much in some ways (IMHO). But we are a good match, all in all. And  I think I speak from experience when I say that  sometimes that is as good as it gets. There's no perfect life when you live with another human being, I don't care what sex they are. There are going to be days when you pick up those socks that are in the middle of the floor, 2 feet away from the laundry basket, and it will be the last straw. And you will throw them out the window or set them on fire or put them in his lunchbox. There are going to be times when you look across the room in incredulous horror, not believing that THIS is the person that has been sleeping next to you all these years. And there will be those times when you look at yourself in the mirror and wonder where the time has gone and how did you get so old so fast. And then you will look back across the room and know:  He's sucked the life right out of you.  LOL

   Of course, there will be other times when you can't believe how the stars must have lined up so right for you to have a blessing like this in your life.  When you realize that here, this person right here, is the one that you have shared history with, that knows you better than you know yourself sometimes, that can still make you laugh after all these years.  

  And for a minute or two, it is all worth it.

  I still want to bake a pound cake.  And those beans aren't going to can themselves. And the marital bed still hasn't been made. So, here I go...off into this life we have made for ourselves that is pretty darn wonderful.

  

  Namaste.